UCHealth officially broke ground today on a health campus that will bring a new full-service hospital and medical center to help meet the needs of a growing area of the state and provide advanced care close to home for patients who live in Weld County.
Crews have been working on the campus southwest of the intersection of U.S. 34 and 65th Avenue since late spring when they started moving dirt. Construction is expected to continue through late 2018, and the facilities will open soon thereafter.
“With the help of this construction crew and hundreds of others who will have a hand in building this health campus, we’ll soon be providing the best possible care, close to home, for patients in this community. These state-of-the-art facilities have been designed not only for safety, quality and efficiency but also convenience and comfort,” said Marilyn Schock, president of UCHealth Greeley Hospital. “We are looking at every detail to ensure we are designing this campus to provide high quality care with an excellent experience for all of our patients.”
Spanning approximately 153,000 square feet, UCHealth Greeley Hospital will include 53 inpatient beds with room to grow. It will include a birth center, intensive care unit, operating and endoscopy rooms, a Level III trauma center and an emergency department.
The new UCHealth Greeley Medical Center will be a 112,500-square-foot outpatient medical center that will bring many of the services UCHealth offers at locations throughout Greeley under one convenient roof. It will include primary care services, specialty clinics, diagnostics, pharmacy, endoscopy, oncology services, imaging and laboratory services.
Dick Monfort, a Greeley native and chairman of UCHealth Board of Directors, was one of the speakers at the groundbreaking that attracted approximately 125 people.
“Our biggest goal right now as a system is to spread our wings and give northern Colorado and Highlands Ranch and Longmont an opportunity to hook into what we think is the best health system in the country,” he said.
The UCHealth Greeley Campus will have a great impact on the health of residents through the many new services that will be offered. It also will have a positive impact on the Greeley and Weld County economies as well. Construction of the hospital alone is expected to generate approximately 500 construction jobs. More than 300 new, permanent jobs will be created when the hospital opens.
“It’s very important for us and very much appreciated that we continue to grow and continue to have this very positive economic development in our community,” Greeley Mayor Tom Norton said in his remarks to the crowd. “This is just another example of how Greeley is great and how you should expect even more from Greeley in the future.”
JE Dunn is the general contractor on the campus project and is supported by BSA LifeStructures, architect; BHA Design Incorporated, landscape architect; Affiliated Engineers Inc., mechanical, electrical and plumbing; Martin/Martin, civil engineer; Stewart Engineering, structural engineer; and Gallun Snow, finishing design/finishes.
UCHealth already operates seven hospitals throughout Colorado, including Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins and Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland. An eighth hospital – UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital in Longmont – will open in late August.